› added 5 years ago

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TIL that 99% of the wasabi consumed in the world is not actually wasabi, it’s horseradish + green food colouring. Real wasabia japonica is one of the most expensive crops to grow and is a temperamental semiaquatic herb native to the mountain streams of central Japan.

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PY6nG TIL that due to the scarcity of food in their natural habitat, newborn wild Axolotls will resort to cannibalism and eat their siblings' limbs. The victims still have chances to survive though, since the Axolotl can regenerate not only limbs but major organs such as gills at any stage in its life.
J1n9v TIL The Mosuo (a Chinese ethnic group) believe that long ago, dogs had life spans of 60 years and humans had life spans of 13 years, and humans traded their life span with the dogs in exchange for honouring them. During the adulthood initiation rites, adolescents pray before the family dogs
mx7Xo TIL "We have the technology to totally fill Twitter, email, and the web up with reasonable-sounding context-appropriate prose, which would drown out all other speech and be impossible to filter." Jeremy Howard
y8N8 TIL: Horses have the largest eyes of any land mammal
WyQ9 TIL that a believed reason for Genghis Khan’s death was an arrow to the knee